Animated GIFs in 6 Steps

(Last Updated On: September 5, 2019)

What are animated GIFs?

Animated GIFs are small, simple, short animations that keep repeating like the example on the left. A YouTube video can show over 16 million different colours. An animated GIF can have a maximum of 256 different colours.

Videos including animated GIFs are becoming so popular that they are a marketing necessity.

The Brain Rules website says, “We are incredible at remembering pictures. Hear a piece of information, and three days later you’ll remember 10% of it. Add a picture and you’ll remember 65%.” Read more.

The Animoto website says, “76.5% of professional marketers and SMB owners that have used video marketing say it has had a direct impact on their business.”

To find tips for making more effective animated GIFs and videos, go to bit.ly/7dayyoutube. That is a free 7-lesson course on making entertaining YouTube videos.

6 steps to creating animated GIFs

(You can find free images at bit.ly/nocostimages. After you get there, click on the “Free Photos” tab in the horizontal menu.) If you have not used Keynote much, go to the Presentation Software blog post.

2. Add a MINIMUM amount of text

The animated GIF will be quite small. So, the text should be as large as is reasonable so that people will indeed read it. People remember pictures much better than they remember text. So, get most of your message across with the images.

3. Use Keynote to animate your text and images

Experiment with the various Build In and Action effects. Go to the bit.ly/nocostimages website, get some free images and practice making a presentation as complex as the one you see below.

4. Record your presentation with ScreenFlow

You will be using ScreenFlow to record, edit & upload your presentation as an animated GIF. Remember to save your ScreenFlow video with a descriptive name as soon as you see it on the screen. Then you can start editing it.